Summary

The United Nations International Crime Prevention and
Criminal Justice Branch began the Surveys of Crime Trends and
Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (formerly known as the World
Crime Surveys) in 1978. The goal of the data collection effort was to
conduct a more focused inquiry into the incidence of crime worldwide.
To date, there have been five quinquennial surveys, covering the years
1970-1975, 1975-1980, 1980-1986, 1986-1990, and 1990-1994,
respectively. Starting with the 1980 data, the waves overlap by one
year to allow for reliability and validity checks of the data. For
this data collection, the original United Nations data were
restructured into a standard contemporary file structure, with each
file consisting of all data for one year. Naming conventions were
standardized, and each country and each variable was given a unique
identifying number. Crime variables include counts of recorded crime
for homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, fraud,
embezzlement, drug trafficking, drug possession, bribery, and
corruption. There are also counts of suspects, persons prosecuted,
persons convicted, and prison admissions by crime, gender, and adult
or juvenile status. Other variables include the population of the
country and largest city, budgets and salaries for police, courts, and
prisons, and types of sanctions, including imprisonment, corporal
punishment, deprivation of liberty, control of freedom, warning, fine,
and community sentence. The countries participating in the survey and
the variables available vary by year.

Citation

Burnham, R.W., and Burnham, Helen. United Nations World Surveys on Crime Trends and Criminal Justice Systems, 1970-1994: Restructured Five-Wave Data. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2006-03-30. https://doi.org/10.3886/ICPSR02513.v1

Geographic Coverage

Time Period(s)

1970 -- 1994

Date of Collection

1997

Data Collection Notes

(1) The user guide, codebooks, and data collection
instruments are provided as Portable Document Format (PDF) files. The
PDF file format was developed by Adobe Systems Incorporated and can be
accessed using PDF reader software, such as the Adobe Acrobat
Reader. Information on how to obtain a copy of the Acrobat Reader is
provided on the ICPSR Web site. (2) While the United Nations
International Crime Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch originally
collected these data, this particular data collection is not an
official product of the United Nations. For more information on the
original United Nations data, users are advised to consult the United Nations Crime and Justice
Information Network.

Study Purpose

The United Nations International Crime
Prevention and Criminal Justice Branch began the Surveys of Crime Trends
and Operations of Criminal Justice Systems (formerly known as the World
Crime Surveys) in 1978. The goal of the data collection effort was to
conduct a more focused inquiry into the incidence of crime worldwide. To
date, there have been five quinquennial surveys, covering the years
1970-1975, 1975-1980, 1980-1986, 1986-1990, and 1990-1994, respectively.
Starting with 1980, the waves overlap by one year to allow for reliability
and validity checks of the data. For this data collection, the file
structure and naming conventions were standardized across waves to
facilitate cross-national comparisons and other analyses.

Study Design

This data collection reconfigured the original
United Nations data into a standard contemporary file structure, with
each file consisting of all data for one year. The data received from
the United Nations were entered into a computerized dataset, using SAS
on a mainframe for the second survey and SPSS PC+ for the third and
subsequent waves. Each country and each variable was given a unique
identifying number. Some of the variables in the original dataset were
not maintained in this version, because the principal investigators
decided that they had no value or potential for analysis. This applies
particularly to the first three surveys, where some variables were
difficult to interpret and others contained almost no data. The
original datasets, in the original configuration, are held by the
United Nations office in Vienna, and can be requested by anyone with a
particular interest in any of the variables omitted from this
collection.

Sample

The surveys were distributed to member and nonmember
states of the United Nations and completed on a voluntary basis.

Universe

All countries.

Unit(s) of Observation

Countries.

Data Source

(1) FIRST UNITED NATIONS WORLD CRIME SURVEY, 1970-1975,
(2) SECOND UNITED NATIONS SURVEY OF CRIME TRENDS, OPERATIONS OF
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS, AND CRIME PREVENTION STRATEGIES, 1975-1980,
(3) THIRD UNITED NATIONS SURVEY OF CRIME TRENDS, OPERATIONS OF
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS, AND CRIME PREVENTION STRATEGIES, 1980-1986,
(4) FOURTH UNITED NATIONS SURVEY OF CRIME TRENDS AND OPERATIONS OF
CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS, 1986-1990, (5) FIFTH UNITED NATIONS SURVEY
OF CRIME TRENDS AND OPERATIONS OF CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEMS, 1990-1994,
all conducted by the United Nations International Crime Prevention and
Criminal Justice Branch

Data Type(s)

aggregate data

Description of Variables

Crime variables include counts of recorded crime
for homicide, assault, rape, robbery, theft, burglary, fraud,
embezzlement, drug trafficking, drug possession, bribery, and
corruption. There are also counts of suspects, persons prosecuted,
persons convicted, and prison admissions by crime, gender, and adult
or juvenile status. Other variables include the population of the
country and largest city, budgets and salaries for police, courts, and
prisons, and types of sanctions, including imprisonment, corporal
punishment, deprivation of liberty, control of freedom, warning, fine,
and community sentence.

Response Rates

Presence of Common Scales

Original Release Date

1999-04-30

Version Date

2006-03-30

Version History

2006-03-30 File UG2513.ALL.PDF was removed from any previous datasets and flagged as a study-level file, so that it will accompany all downloads.

2005-11-04 On 2005-03-14 new files were added to one
or more datasets. These files included additional setup files as well
as one or more of the following: SAS program, SAS transport, SPSS portable,
and Stata system files. The metadata record was revised 2005-11-04 to
reflect these additions.

1999-04-30 ICPSR data undergo a confidentiality review and are altered when necessary to limit the risk of disclosure. ICPSR also routinely creates ready-to-go data files along with setups in the major statistical software formats as well as standard codebooks to accompany the data. In addition to these procedures, ICPSR performed the following processing steps for this data collection:

Standardized missing values.

Created online analysis version with question text.

Checked for undocumented or out-of-range codes.

Notes

The public-use data files in this collection are available for access by the general public. Access does not require affiliation with an ICPSR member institution.

The citation of this study may have changed due to the new version control system that has been implemented.